Comments on: Choosing a development ’stack’ for Windows desktop applications

By: Vasudev Ram

Vasudev Ram — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:19:21 +0000

Not really on the main topic of this post, but since many of the commenters said they use and like Delphi, here’s some news (they may have seen already) - CodeGear has been sold to Embarcadero Technologies. Google for “+CodeGear +Embarcadero” or other relevant keyword(s).

Both David Intersimone (VP of Developer Relations at CodeGear) and the CEO of Embarcadero say that they will retain all the CodeGear products (for now, though there will be regular evaluations for business viability).

- Vasudev

By: Harald Scheirich

Harald Scheirich — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:14:22 +0000

About a year ago we migrated our apps from Managed C++/Forms to C++ with Qt. I have to say we have been very happy with Qt, the class libraries are quite complete. The GUI designer works well or better than most other tools I have seen in that area.

We evaluated wx, gtk+ and a slew of other smaller libraries and we contemplated migrating to Java. Java was not really an option due to our use of a large C++ library.

Yes QT is pricey, especially for an independent developer, but for us it was worth the price.

By: Steve Cholerton

Steve Cholerton — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:02:26 +0000

Hi. I recently emailed Rory Blyth asking for his opinions on Cross platform tools, specifically REALbasic, as I need to develop for the PC but now use exclusively Mac (except for my VMWare Images). Here’s the response from his Blog. http://www.neopoleon.com/home/blogs/neo/archive/2008/03/17/29941.aspx

I don’t agree with everything he says but it’s an interesting perspective. - Steve
http://www.tektalkin.co.uk

By: NativeCoder

NativeCoder — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:03:39 +0000

I have used Java in the past and developed several years in C++ using MFC…. And then I was introduced with Delphi. Since then I never looked back. It is simply the best choice when choosing your development stack for Windows applications.
The VCL is probably the best component library currently available for the native platform today. Its compiler is several orders of magnitude faster than the best C++ compiler, and it produces native code that runs equally as fast.
Kylix in the past and FreePascal/Lazarus and Delphi.NET today prove that the VCL is very cross-platform friendly. Applications written in older versions of Delphi seldom need any changes when a new version of Delphi is introduced.
Before Java it had interfaces, and long before C# and the .NET hype it had components, properties, events, RTTI, packages. From day one all VCL sources were shipped with the enterprise version of the product, while Microsoft didn’t do this for the first versions of their .NET framework (maybe because it can be reverse engeneerded so easily :)).
The only useful features that Delphi for Win32 misses today are full unicode support, generics and a 64bit compiler. Man I was happy to read that CodeGear is now focusing on implementing those features in stead of loosing time in a .NET version of Delphi. I still can’t believe why they invested so much time in the past in supporting the .NET framework. Maybe Codegear decided to make a .NET version to prove how elegant the VCL really is
I looked at .NET recently and I rejected it. I really do like the C# language, but I hate .NET. The main reasons are already noted in this article and in the comments of fellow Delphi developers.
- Distribution of your applications is a real pain. With Delphi you can ship your application in one executable, that runs on all the windows versions made since Windows 95.
- Though not as slow as Java applications, .NET applications are still slower than native ones (ok, after JIT only slightly) and they are very greedy with memory.
- Your applications are very easy to reverse engeneer, even after using fancy obfuscation tools. Code that checks for a serial number for example, needs to be implemented in a seperate (yes native!) library.
- The .NET framework is becoming very very complex and big.
- Upgrading your applications to newer versions of .NET requires more work than doing the same with Delphi applications.
- Winforms are a joke compared to VCL.
- Delphi is made in Delphi (I just hate the requirement of .NET for the refactoring capabilities of the IDE). Is Visual Studio 2008 written in .NET?

By: Pedant

Pedant — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:34:32 +0000

>That’s not an entirely fair comparison If you’re going to use the RB website you should perhaps compare with the official Borland/Codesite fora.
<

I think that those are the official Borland/Codegear fora via someone else. I could be wrong though.

By: Jim Cooper

Jim Cooper — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:20:47 +0000

> Contrast the following sites for ease of use and activity:

That’s not an entirely fair comparison If you’re going to use the RB website you should perhaps compare with the official Borland/Codesite fora.

By: Jim Cooper

Jim Cooper — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:18:01 +0000

> That still doesn’t mean that a .Net app is a native app in my book,
> but I may be splitting semantic hairs

Well, I think saying it runs in a VM is also misleading (IMO the definition of virtual machines in places like Wikipedia is so broad as to make it useless).

You do get a performance hit from the jitter, of course. But supposedly it will optimise the machine code for each machine (how well, I don’t know)

And I did mean NGen, not netgen, sorry

NGen is not normally run on a user’s machine, IME, but I don’t think it is all that useful a tool, myself, as it compiles in loads of framework code too.

I just mentioned it to reinforce the point that .NET apps are not interpreted, and the IL never runs anywhere.

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:11:33 +0000

Some more useful comments on xenocode and competitors here:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.611691.17

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 15:39:57 +0000

Andy: I’ve tried one of those (could have been Xenocode) but it just made Hello World into a 12MB file. Fine as a once-off but I do a lot of auto-updates so having a big file would really irritate some users. I’d much rather have them download the framework once-off and have my app effectively smaller for updates.

By: Med

Med — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:30:11 +0000

delphi.about.com

everything you want about Delphi is here, it RAD and RDL (rapid developpement learning)